I owe him a career, I suspect a lot of others do as well.
Yup. His little ZX computer was the gateway drug into programming for me.
Sir Clive Sinclair has died
81–90 of 455 posts
Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died
#82Although I was in the Acorn camp, my first home exposure was to a friends ZX81. The keyboard!
In highschool, my physics teacher had a C5, which he could not get 'road legal' in The Netherlands.
Great times. RIP.
Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died
#83My dad had a ZX Spectrum. The music to Spy Hunter is seared into my brain. Such early exposure to tech (and to some extent dealing with its crappiness) started me on the path to becoming the software engineer I am today. RIP Sir Clive.
Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died
#84Ouch.
I'm here because of Sir Clive. Like many I started with a 1k ZX81.
Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died
#85They don't make them like that no more. What would it take for technology to feel again just... white magic.
Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died
#86Uh oh. Soviet ZX spectrum clone was my first computer, and the first I ever wrote a program on using a built-in basic at an age of 10. This was a magnificent device that brought me a lot of joy. Rest In Peace, Sir Clive. Now, I'll go play some Manic Miner or Nether Earth in your honor.
I've seen one of those during my time in Poland.
Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died
#87That pocket TV is ridiculously cool and he knows it.
Yup! That, and his LED wrist watch - an absolute brilliant piece of work at the time!
Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died
#88The excellent Micro Men docudrama ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Men ) has somehow been on Youtube since 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM (1h24m) Micro Men, working title Syntax Era, is a 2009 one-off BBC drama television programme set in the late 1970s and the early-mid 1980s, about the rise of the British home computer market. It focuses on the rivalry between Sir Clive Sinclair (played by A…
"Games! Games! Everywhere I go games! This is what my lifetime of achievement has been reduced to! Clive Sinclair the man who brought you Jet Set f**ing Willy!" -- Clive Sinclair (fictional), Micro Men
Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died
#89Anybody noticed, the inventor of the ZX81 of course died at the age of 81. So, he predicted this decades ago?
Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died
#90Grew up in a house surrounded by many wonderful machines, but by far the most beautiful and alluring were the Spectrums. My dad wrote some reasonably popular books on these things in the 80s which pretty much set me on my way:
https://worldofspectrum.org/archive/books/working-sinclair-q...
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/2000420/Book/The_Worki...